Borrego is hardly a typical high school student, and he knows it. The stereotype of a cyberconnected, self-centered teenager motivates him to be better, he said.

In his case, that means putting on a community theater production of “The Hobbit” as the youngest director in recent Theatre in the Grove history. The play opens Friday, Jan. 17.

Theater board president Jeff Zimmerman can’t remember another teenage director, and Zimmerman has been involved with Theatre in the Grove for 25 years.

But Zimmerman and the rest of the board trusted Borrego to direct the annual schools production, which shows several times during the middle of weekdays. About a dozen area schools bring their students to see the production each year, estimated production manager Jeanna Van Dyke.

Want to see it?

Daytime showings are reserved for schoolchildren, but here are the public showtimes:

Tickets cost $14 for adults and $12 for youths and seniors. Buy them through Theatre in the Grove's website or at the door an hour before the show.

Borrego has been involved in the theater since he himself was in elementary school. As a child, he participated in the theater’s after-school programs and summer camps. In recent years, he has helped Van Dyke run summer camps, and last summer, he tried working on sets and helping to direct.

So when Van Dyke was thinking about “The Hobbit” in September, she asked Borrego if he wanted to direct it.

He was shocked, but he accepted. Borrego loves J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle-Earth, including “The Hobbit,” which follows a troop of dwarves, a wizard and a hobbit on their journey to reclaim the dwarves’ home from a dragon. Theatre in the Grove will present Patricia Gray’s adaptation of the story.

Van Dyke knew Borrego was familiar with “The Hobbit,” and she knew he could rise to the challenge of directing it.

“He’s an exceptional young man,” she said. “Talented in so many ways.”

Van Dyke mentors Borrego in the theater, and she is advising him during rehearsals for the production.

Most rehearsals, though, she just watches. Most of what she says is warning kids to watch where they point their prop swords.

When Borrego talks about himself, his words are quiet and few. But during rehearsals, he’s clearly in charge. He can joke with the child actors and lead them in singing “Happy Birthday” to a castmate. But he can also shepherd a dozen or so kids and adults into a circle to warm up their voices.

And even though he’s still in high school -- younger than some of the actors in “The Hobbit” -- he’s taken on extra responsibilities.

He wrote the production’s music himself, adding in songs and melodies he worked on for weeks and recorded on a Sunday.

When the actor playing dwarf leader Thorin backed out nine days before opening night, Borrego decided to take on the role. He already knew where to stand and move as well as many of Thorin’s lines and songs. He was reluctant, but teaching someone else such a major part would slow everyone else down.

Despite the total of four actors who dropped out of the production, Borrego expects it to go well. The cast and crew have impressed him, he said, and every replacement actor has stepped up to the role.

This is what he thinks about during his senior year at Forest Grove High School, waiting for the clock to signal the day’s end. Borrego said he likes dedicating time and hard work to a worthy cause, and for him, that’s the theater.